Although the benefits of nanotube material-based devices are well known, currently it is still difficult to manufacture reliable and practical devices with nanotube arrays for information storage. Moreover, even though it is well known that different states, such as those representing a “bit 0” and a “bit 1”, can be associated with different positions of charged nano-particles within a nanotube, it is difficult to detect the positions of the nano-particles inside the nanotube without disturbing the positions. In other words, it is technically difficult, if not impossible, to read binary data consisting of “bit 0” or “bit 1” stored in a nanotube array by detecting the positions of the nano-particles within the nanotube array without changing the positions of the nano-particles.